We love the Sock Monkeys Against Cancer. Please help.

My friend Jennifer Stauss Windrum is a woman on a mission. For several years, remedy her mom has been dying of lung cancer – which, sadly, looks as though it may be entering its final stages. But rather than sit back and watch it happen, Jennifer decided to fight back with not one, but two powerful cause branding ideas: swear words, and monkeys. And now, she needs your help.

Two of the spokes-monkeys for the Jennifer Stauss Windrum anti-cancer campaign: SMAC (Sock Monkeys Against Cancer)

WTF Lung Cancer (WTF, as in: “Where’s The Funding?!?”)

WTF? Yup. That’ s the swear words part; WTF is Windrum’s fierce and fearless ongoing campaign to lobby for more funding for lung cancer victims. Here’s how it was described in a Huffington Post article on Jennifer last year:

Long time readers (both of you – hi mom!) know I’m not a fan of TLAs here at Beg to Differ (Three Letter Abbreviations). But when they are cheeky and in your face like this one? BIO! (By which I mean Bring It On!) You’ll also know I had my own campaign called NOMO Government Acronyms (No More). Which brings me to the first sock monkey Jennifer made for her mom: little NOMO the monkey.

SMAC (Sock Monkeys Against Cancer) crowd-funding campaign

Here’s Jennifer’s mom with NOMO and Phoenix, two of the original SMACs.

This is Jennifer’s new, and even more brilliant, defiant, heart-felt, cancer busting campaign. It involves monkeys. Real, in-the-stuffing sock monkeys that Jennifer is creating to bring attention to the issues, while also providing comfort to the victims of cancer and their families.

And the name of the leading monkey? NOMO. Now normally, I’d get all prima-dona-huffy that my best ideas are getting stolen. But Jennifer, feel free to steal this one, okay?

As a close family member of someone who is fighting with a very serious cancer right now (go Marg!) I think this SMAC concept is so brilliant, because these monkeys operate on so many levels for me:

A brand with a sense of humour: These monkeys are a fun and positive approach to an awful condition that is usually neither.

A defiant statement: But these monkeys are fighters. They’re like a little cancer-fighting ninja companion to keep up the spirits of the person they’re fighting for.

Support for cancer research: just like the WTF campaign, this is all about beating cancer – both at the individual level, and hopefully, to beat cancer for all of us.

Smart gift product: When someone we love is suffering, we always want to DO something, and often BUY something for them. But it’s so hard to know what to give. These monkeys aren’t just a gift, they’re a statement.

Crowd funding campaign: and speaking of gifts, and things you can do. Jennifer is currently using online crowd funding to put her SMAC monkeys into larger scale production.

BUT, it won’t happen without you…

As with all great, social-entrepreneurial ideas, Jennifer has already invested decades of time, and oodles of enthusiasm. But now, she needs money. Which is why I pledged to help her crowd-funding campaign. And so can you. Best case: she reaches her goal and you get some cool perks (see links below). Worst case: if she doesn’t reach her goal, it costs you nothing.

Meeting the challenge of expanding Stonz into new markets

If you follow me as @DenVan on Twitter, information pills you might have seen that I contributed to a Dan Misener piece in today’s Globe and Mail. It was a brand strategy critique of the Canadian kids footwear and winter-wear brand Stonz. But as with many such things, order the advice I provided was about twice as long as the space they had for me. So for Stonz, and all brand managers (and geeks), I’ve included my full thoughts below.

First of all, here’s the Globe and Mail Article (click to visit)

The Stonz brand strategy challenge

Here’s their logo. The visual connection to footwear is pretty strong. As is the line above the “O”.

As the article says, Stonz is a Vancouver-based company that manufactures a growing portfolio of clothing and footwear for children. But their signature product, and the one most deeply associated with the Stonz brand, is the type of booty you see above for infants and toddlers. It’s big selling point: two rip cords help to keep it on your toddler’s feet – which is a real plus for us parents.

Their big problem: knock-offs. And this is particularly a problem as the company tried to expand into new markets overseas. Or as the article describes it:

(Founder and CEO Lisa Will) has seen several competing products that bear a strong resemblance to the all-weather outdoor baby boots sold by her company. She has even seen ads for “fake stonz” pop up online.

Ms. Will believes her booties were the “originals,” but while the company has secured worldwide trademarks for the Stonz brand, it does not hold any patents on its bootie design or other products, she says.

Karinna and Joyce focused on building a brand story around the moms that founded the company, and to highlight the “original” and Canadian nature of the brand. And I fully agree. But I think Stonz has a bigger problem. I think the name is a serious liability. Here was my full comment:

My brand strategy advice for Stonz (full text)

When I asked my wife – the chief buyer of clothing for our three kids – to name some children’s boot brands off the top of her head, she rattled off Cougars, Sorels, Uggs, Bogs, and “Kamiviks” (sic.).

Ever heard of Stonz? “Nope,” she said.

“How about these?” I asked her, showing her the company Web site. “Oh, those!” She said. “We had a pair of those booties for a while.”

She remembered the “booties” but not the Stonz brand.

That’s a problem

Product innovation and pure marketing chutzpah have gotten this company very far indeed, and congratulations to them for that. But apparel products, promotions, supply chains, and social media campaigns are far too easy (and legal) to copy. What can’t be copied is a strong, memorable brand “hook” that makes one product the brand all similar products are compared to.

Think of the Canadian-invented footwear product “Foam Creations,” which only became a global phenomenon and a billion dollar public company when an American team bought it, and re-launched it under the much stronger brand name, Crocs.

How do I know it’s a more effective name? Because all last week I was telling my kids “Put your Crocs on. We’re going to the beach!” But I can’t even imagine saying to my toddler on a cold winter day: “Let’s put your Stonz (Stones? Stons?) on and go outside.” I would just say “booties”.

I don’t think it’s too late for these smart, driven entrepreneurs to thoughtfully and strategically re-launch their core brand. But I do think it needs to happen. And soon.

But what do you think?

Am I being to hard on that name? Is it really necessary to change it? Weigh in in the comments below!

Note to self: in the future, approved don’t volunteer to have a drawing on your blog until you figure out how it’s going to work! I’ve burned WAY too much time and Google-leather trying to figure out something that turned out to be very simple in the end.

So two credits before we get to the draw results:

1) This product: Backtweets allowed me to quickly and easily trace all the Tweets for my previous post through all variants and URL shorteners.

2) EHow.com + Microsoft Excel: the next problem was doing a random draw. I’ve used tools like TwitterDraw and RowFeeder before, but couldn’t figure out how to do both the hashtag AND the blog comments part of the equation.

Mitt Romney’s weapons of mass anachronism

In one brilliant moment in last night’s US Presidential debate, see Barack Obama was able to take a Mitt Romney soundbyte – that the US Navy is smaller today than it was in 1916 – and turn it into a meme-beating-meme of his own. Which led to a lot of spin-off memes. But in thinking about it, visit this I realized: Mitt Romney has a lot of reasons to look back fondly at 1916.

Which of course, went viral on social media almost instantly. So last night, hoping to add to the viral feeding frenzy, I posted an infographic (at right) about Mitt Romney and his binders full of modern ideas.

But 1916 was a really interesting choice for Romney to make in many, many other ways. I’ll give you 10 – with my tongue firmly in cheek of course.

10 Reasons for Mitt Romney to like 1916 so much.

American “manifest destiny” dreams were at their peak. American troops occupied Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, the Philippines, and a bunch of others. Sure it was expensive. But it was cool.

The US Navy had WAY more boats in 1916 than today. Okay, they looked like this (below), but there were LOTS of them!

The US invaded the Dominican Republic. They installed a puppet dictatorship, then spent years fighting grumpy insurgents. Mitt should try that somewhere. It could work!

Republicans were pushing the US to go to war with Mexico! That would have been awesome!

Massive military buildups between the world’s superpowers over the previous decade meant that in Europe they were having a Great War!

It only cost $17 million to build 375 new “aeroplanes” in 1916. In the F35 fighter program that would buy you a floor mat and two barf bags.

The rich were doing just fine.The Rockefellers and Carnegies were at their height and the richest 1% held more wealth than ever before in history!

Check out the similarity between 1917 – what gazillionaires refer to as the “good old days” – and the modern era. Oh, but cheat the 2012 line up to 24%.

Blacks were allowed to vote, but sneaky tricks were used to keep them away from the polls! Forget photo ID laws. Those 1916 voter suppression ideas were even more radical!

American women couldn’t vote yet. That would totally help Mitt’s chances!

A popular Democrat named Woodrow Wilson won a second term running against a completely forgettable Republican opponent. That guy was named… um…

Oh wait. Ignore that last one Mitt! 1916 is totally the year you should focus on!

A conference strong – and free (*if you win the pass)

The presentation will explore the profound changes that are happening in Canada today. What do Canadians look like? What do they value? Who do they trust? Understanding these factors is essential to being a successful communicator in the New Canada.

Indeed. We communicators need to know our audience. But as Canadians communicating to Canadians, that actually means we need to know and understand ourselves – our own brand and how it relates to Brand Canada.And that is bloody hard – whether you are a backpacker in Europe, a business, or the Dalai Lama. We all have our blinkers on.

So what is a Canadian?

We’ll get to the Bricker’s mind-bending insights in a moment, but I want to hear from you:

What is this thing we call a “Canadian”?

What does being Canadian mean – and can we measure Canadian-ness?

How does that effect how we communicate with Canadians?

And in return for sharing, you could get a free pass to that conference.

Special offer from Beg to Differ(Generously provided by organizers of the IABC Summit)What you get:
Free One-day conference pass valued at $675 for either November 2nd or 3rd (your choice).How to enter:
Two ways: 1) Answer the questions above in the comments; OR 2) Share this post on Twitter with the hashtag #CdnIABC12. I’ll draw a winner at random on Monday morning.

Ten surprising facts about Canadians

So without further ado: some shocking stats about Canadians taken from Bricker’s book and this interview – originally from the Globe and Mail.

The average Canadian spends 7.7 minutes in the shower.

750,000 Canadians believe the country borders the “Antarctic Ocean”

Only 27% of Canadians know what happened in 1867. (Hint: you’re soaking in it)

The majority of Canadians believe in angels, but in Saskatchewan and Manitoba it’s 77 per cent.

Canadians would rather have the superhero power to heal themselves than travel in time.

Almost one in three Canadians admits they let “laundry pile up until they run out of underwear”.

58 per cent of Canadian women feel most romantic with the sound of waves nearby.

When asked to compare their partner to an animal, Canadian women were less likely to choose gorilla, tiger, or stallion (Oh my!). The most popular answer? “Cuddly bear.”

The most popular answer from Canadian men to the same question: “don’t know.”